Flexible PON systems enabling optical virtual private network and upstream channel upgrade

Abstract

With the rapid growth of peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic in the access network, the capability to implement inter-optical network unit (ONU) communication (IOC) has become a fundamental requirement for the underlying passive optical network (PON). The conventional IOC is realized electronically on layer 2 or layer 3 and relies on the transfer operations in the optical line terminal (OLT), thus resulting in high transmission latency and excessive bandwidth consumption. To achieve an efficient IOC, the optical virtual private network (OVPN) is proposed to establish direct optical layer links among ONUs by adding some auxiliary optical components to the existing PON system. However, in previously reported OVPN schemes, the added devices are only used for IOC and cannot fulfill other network functions, which leads to poor flexibility. To improve the reconfigurability of the whole PON system, we present two simple modifications that can not only achieve a high-bandwidth OVPN but also increase the upstream channel capacity. The proposed schemes introduce a new wavelength as the OVPN channel to refrain from changing the physical configuration of the normal upstream and downstream. One scheme retrofits the optical line terminal (OLT) with a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based reflection module, while the other employs an additional short-length distribution fiber for each ONU to redirect IOC traffic. In both schemes, optical switches (OSWs) are used to control the added OVPN wavelength and the original upstream wavelength so that the two wavelengths can transmit IOC traffic and upstream traffic flexibly. According to the states of OSWs, PON systems will form multiple working modes adapted to different network conditions. To evaluate the improvement in flexibility of wavelength usage, the throughput performances of proposed schemes were analyzed theoretically under varying offered loads and IOC traffic proportions. In addition, the feasibility of both schemes was verified through physical layer simulations, where the optical spectra and bit error rates (BERs) of signals on different wavelengths were investigated.